UNSTOPP4BLE

Why you shouldn't buy Huawei and Honor watches


Guide overview

In this guide, I will expose some arguments of why you shouldn't buy Huawei and Honor watches.
Keep in mind that my arguments are based on my experience since I had two wearables from these companies and they're also based on my researches; I've spent a lot of time researching about everything on their watches, finding bugs, testing their algorithms with different scenarios etc...

This guide is based on my YouTube video that you can see here.

You should read this guide if you want to buy their wearables, or if you're interested by their wearables.

Lack of smartness

First of all, their wearables aren't smart at all; you can see almost everywhere that it's described as a smartwatch/band, but it's completely wrong.

website describing Huawei Watch GT2 as a smartwatch

A website describing the Huawei Watch GT2 as a smartwatch

In order to explain this; a smartwatch/band should be smart. Therefore it must do and we must be able to do smart things; like sending/replying to a text from the watch, installing apps, and more. But it isn't the case here. Their watches are mostly fitness oriented (and it's not even accurate to track most of the stats).

Moreover, the hardware specifications of their watches are too much light to allow them to be smarter. For instance, the GT2, the GT Runner and the GT3 series (we can mention the Honor MagicWatch2, GS Pro, and GS3 as well) only have 32mb of RAM and a poor CPU. So it's almost impossible for them to be smart like their concurrents.
If you're looking for a smartwatch, you should obviously seek for a Galaxy or an Apple watch.

Inaccuracies, although it's fitness oriented...

As a second argument, I'll mention the inaccuracy of these wearables; although it's fitness oriented, it's inaccurate on many things because of the limited hardware (and it could be bad sensors too);
First of all, it's inaccurate on the altimeter, as you can see in the picture below, the graph has a lot of variations. But the problem is that I didn't walk downhill; I stayed at home during all the day.

Inaccurate altimeter

Inaccurate altimeter

Secondly, there is a huge delay (about 5-15 seconds) to pick up the current speed and heart rate; it's due to the limited hardware and the bad optimization of their heart rate algorithm. Therefore, it makes the distance data wrong and the heart rate graph inconsistent.

Keep in mind that the heart rate sensor/algorithm of almost all of their watches (except GT3) tends to overrate the resting heart rate, and it also underrates the warming up heart rate; so it's pretty inaccurate and they didn't improve it at all on their previous watches.

You can see the delay in this video. Although it mentions Huawei GT, the delay is still present in their watches. :

Huawei is too much dependent upon Android

If you intend to buy a Huawei Watch 3, you definitely shouldn’t; the Huawei watch 3 is based on Android. Therefore, it’s like a Wear OS watch without the actual Wear OS look and features and it’s on a restricted ecosystem.

You can see it here :

In this video, you can see that the Watch 3 can run Android apps like YouTube and Spotify. It's thanks to ADB (Android Debug Bridge) which is a developer option present in Android phones and watches.
Therefore, it shows that Huawei can't do smart, and smooth watches on their own. They should try to bring WearOS back on their watches.

Honor abandon their wearables quickly

As the header indicates, this part will be focused on Honor; they stop providing updates for their watches after a short time of their release date. For instance, the Honor MagicWatch 2 got released on November, 2019. And they stopped providing updates for it in January 2021.

Therfore, the Honor MagicWatch 2's numerous bugs and translation errors will still be there and they won't be corrected...

Huawei and Honor watches and the Health app have numerous bugs

Huawei and Honor watches (and also the Health app) have numerous bugs that you can notice easily. When I say bugs, I also include translation errors.

Here's a list of bugs that Huawei and Honor watches and the Health app have :

There are many others but I don't want this guide to be a novel. If you want to see the other bugs. You can see these on my YouTube channel

Primitive Operating System (LiteOS and HarmonyOS)

The Operating System of Huawei and Honor watches is very primitive. When talking about LiteOS, it's understandable since the OS' name indicates it. But buying a $150-300 watch that has no animations, that feels slow, unoptimized and bugged while navigating, that has no smart and interesting features really sucks, especially for the price.
But on HarmonyOS (on the GT3 and GT Runner), it's incomprehensible; it should be a new OS, which isn't the case because it mostly feels like a rebranding of LiteOS.
Although it has been really optimized and that it has animations now. It's still missing the smart features.

Conclusion

In order to conclude, you shouldn't buy Huawei or Honor watches if you want :

Their watches are very basic, and it's overpriced; especially for what it is.


This is the end of this guide, I hope it has been useful to make your choice ! If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comment section !

See also

My YouTube video in which the guide is based on.

Tell us what do you think about this guide :